


When Shall We Meet Again, In Thunder, Lighting, Or In Rain?

by Methoxyethane



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Canon Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, POV Alternating, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 12:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14853035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Methoxyethane/pseuds/Methoxyethane
Summary: When Odin brings home Loki as a baby it’s not as an adopted child, but as an intended betrothed for his own son Thor. Everything from that point proceeds exactly the same anyway, because not being told your a frost giant has some psychological effects that can't be avoided. (Thor loves him anyway.)





	When Shall We Meet Again, In Thunder, Lighting, Or In Rain?

Growing up with the person you knew you were someday bound to marry was an odd thing. Especially, Thor decided, for someone who didn’t have any siblings to play with, and only had the company of one’s betrothed for most of their youth. Loki had been taken in by their father after the war, apparently with the intention of fulfilling a promise of betrothal he’d made with parents who died for him in Jotunheim, but all of this was back before either of the boys were old enough to retain memory of such.

For all the time they spent learning and playing together, it was easy to forget Loki was his fiance and not his real brother… or sister as the occasion may call for, since as soon as Loki’s magic had mastered shapeshifting he’d been prone to random bouts of time living as a girl. Either way for most of their early childhood Thor had no understanding of what they were supposed to be to each other, and only Odin’s constant reminders that Loki was not his kin stopped Thor from introducing Loki to the other children as his family.

He tried to pay more attention to the concept of marriage when they grew a bit older, watching his parents and the other wedded pairs in Asgard and trying to decide how and he and Loki would fit together. Loki himself didn’t make it any easier, playing with snakes with Thor in the garden one moment and stabbing him the next; some days being content with reading in the parlor and pretending to listen to Thor’s stories and others screaming at him that Thor should stop following her around for five minutes and give her some Norn-beloved space. 

And no, it wasn’t the part where Loki randomly changed sex depending on his mood that confused Thor. For most of their youth Thor had simply thought of it as Loki wearing his hair longer. Aware peripherally of the slight changes in appearance and behavior and necessary pronouns but otherwise content that Loki was still Loki no matter what, even if sometimes he liked roughhousing in the mud and other times she liked dancing lessons with Mother while Thor learned boring history lessons. It was all the same, really. Loki was still Loki and still laughed at the same cruel jokes not matter what.

It was around age twelve or thirteen that Thor started paying more attention to the idea of romance. Specifically the physical side of romance, and things like… Loki’s pale skin and slender waist, and the possibility of one day touching said features. He made vague attempts at proper courting in between the adventures he and his friends enjoyed, although he wasn’t sure what a ‘date’ entailed exactly when Loki was always coming along to join them in monster hunting anyway so it’s not like they didn’t spend time together.

Presents were a good way to please his fiance, flowers working sometimes and pet frogs working others and books about poison being welcome pretty much always because Loki was just Like That. Their increasingly different afternoon schedules aside, spending time alone in the evenings was something they’d always done to begin with so he was pretty sure whatever they did after dinner didn’t count as dating, and he always got bored and lost interest in love stories so he didn’t know any for back up because the only romance he DID know about happened in the middle of harrowing adventures and war and involved a lot of crying which was entirely unhelpful on a day to day basis. 

He didn’t know about ‘love’ in any of its forms yet, but he knew he liked that he and Loki were engaged. It gave them a connection he didn’t have with his other friends, a promise of permanence. And it was an excuse to spend all their time together even though they had nothing in common and Loki thought most of Thor’s adventures were shit ideas, because Thor liked having Loki around to make snide yet hideously clever comments and thought the magic Loki used to get them out of said adventures was just about the coolest thing he’d ever seen. Not as cool as just cleaving a giant orc through the face with a hammer of course, but that’s what Loki had Thor for. It took both of them to make a good team.

Thor adored Loki, and wanted nothing more than for him to stay by his side being Thor’s more sensible half for as long as the Norns gave them. 

Whether or not they ever figured out the…  _ feelings  _ part of their relationship, it did eventually involve being permitted access to the contents of Loki’s pants on a semi-regular basis when they were teenagers. That only lasted until they got caught and were no longer allowed into each other’s bedrooms until they were wed, which would have been much less of a hardship if it were only Loki growing more beautiful every day and not everyone else in the entirety of Asgard as well, and now that Thor’s tensions were going unreleased he was beginning to take far too much notice of them…

Thor never strayed of course because he was a man of honor. But needless to say, the day they finally DID marry was a relief in more ways than one.

\--

Loki’s plan, while not entirely unsuccessful, had not gone as he had intended. 

The goal had to prevent his moronic husband from becoming king and leading their entire realm straight into war and chaos. This had been achieved, as well as Thor acting exactly as Loki had predicted he would at the Jotun’s infiltration. The things he had not meant to happen included the attack being noticed about three minutes too late to prevent Thor’s official coronation as King, which fortunately at least did not prevent Odin from shutting down his attempted declaration of war faster than a bilgesnipe’s jaw. 

The part where Thor and his friends snuck off to Jotunheim to play conquest was also according to Loki’s original plan, but that had been more under the idea that when he was caught Odin would see better than to allow him the crown yet, and not… total banishment. That was rather an accident on Loki’s part, but it did at least have the upside of removing him from power to save Asgard from his immature wrath.

He could plea to Odin for Mercy on Thor’s behalf, but… Somehow, he wasn’t willing to. Not only because he doubted his opinion would have any sway on the Allfather’s, but… in a way, something about Thor’s exile presented Loki with a freedom he’d never experienced before.

Though they’d only been married five short years, for his entire life Loki had belonged to Thor. Not just in an official capacity, but to the point where Loki didn’t even feel like he was his own person as much as simply an extension of Thor, existing only for the sake of supporting the other man as king. Even what he learned in lessons from dearest Frigga, the closest thing Loki had in this world to a mother, seemed to all boil down to ways he could better serve his king and country as future queen of the realm. Which, from Frigga’s own example, seemed to involved mostly a great deal of public relations.

He did not resent Thor, nor their union, really. But whatever love he may have had for Thor did not make a good marriage by itself, and Thor had a way of utterly unappreciating Loki that left a bitter taste in his mouth whenever he thought of it. He expected Loki to always be there standing behind him and completely disregarded his opinion unless Loki was already agreeing with him. He never strayed from Loki’s bed, but the way he unabashedly flirted with any female he pleased left the impression that he might not stay so faithful for the entirety of their marriage. And worse yet, Loki wasn’t the only one who’d noticed, leaving his own reputation pretty much null and void in the kingdom, passed off as Thor’s unfortunate little wife.

Being without him for a while would be a welcome change. Maybe Thor would pick up some manners on Midgard and come back with a realization of how much he truly needed Loki.

Of course, there was one slight doubt Loki had wriggling in the back of his mind that ruined everything. No matter how many times he’d asked as a child Odin would only give him the vaguest details about his parents, and the little romp to Jotunheim had given Loki a terrible suspicion as to why that was.

So Loki sought out the Cask of Winters to confirm his fears. Rather difficult to enjoy his new life as an independent man when he was busy dealing with his entire life having been a lie, being not the heir of Asgardian heroes but rather more of a stolen war bride. Of a race of monsters they’d been taught to hate as children. 

The confrontation with Odin was… also not according to plan. Odin had made some excuse that a treaty with Laufey from long before either he or Thor was born was the source of the engagement, but considering the war that followed suggesting the obvious breach of said treatise all Loki took away from it was that Odin had stolen him from his home and didn't even have enough care for Loki’s fate to raise him as his own son, preferring instead to shove his care onto the governess and his education to Frigga and the rest of Loki’s life thereafter a gift to his precious only child  _ Thor _ .

Somewhere in his screaming at Odin about how he’d never loved him and all that, Odin collapsed, which was unsettling on all kinds of levels. But with his ill health brought Loki an opportunity he had barely even considered in the past - since Thor’s coronation had indeed gone uninterrupted, without Odin around that rather resulted in Loki being rightful Queen of all Asgard. 

Thor was gone. Powerless and alone in a primitive realm, so far away he couldn’t even pick Asgard out in the sky. And now the king and Allfather was gone as well, and for the first time ever Loki had total freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted. Odin would wake up yet, granted, but… if Loki could find a way to win his favor in the meantime, make Odin see him as the family they at least  _ legally  _ were to each other…

By the time Odin awoke, the Bifrost was destroyed, Thor had fallen in love with a Midgardian woman, and the look of utter disappointment shining in Odin’s single eye was too much to bear. 

Loki had to get away from this toxic disaster of a family. If he couldn’t find a crack in the dimensions to slip through, then even dying was better than the looks on the faces of the men he called his  _ family. _

\--

When Thor finally found Loki, truly alive after falling off the Rainbow Bridge into the abyss of space, he had a look of madness in his eyes Thor had never seen before. 

Thor was still not entirely certain of what had happened in his exile, but even when he had last seen Loki falling into the depths of nothing his eyes had not held the pure unhinged desperation Thor saw when he found his husband again in Midgard.

What had happened to Loki? Where had he been and how did he come to ally himself with a race as barbaric as the Chitauri in his quest for revenge? Loki was a trickster and often a jealous twat, but he’d had no heart or taste for conquest before he had learned he was a frost giant. If Thor had been there, might he have been able to talk Loki through it and assure him he was still loved? Could Thor possibly have protected his husband from the madness the abyss has inflicted him with if he had jumped off after him to be at his side?

It did not matter. For now Loki had already committed far too many crimes against too many realms, and Thor was not bringing home his dearly-missed spouse but a prisoner to be judged, and there was nothing he could say or do to bring him back to sanity. Or if there was, Thor certainly hadn’t thought of it yet.

For all Thor may adore Loki, may have missed him in these last months more than any words could say, it would not stop him from protecting Midgard. Thor saw now he wasn’t a good ruler but he was at least trying to be a good man, he could save this realm from the disasters Thor’s very presence had set upon it.

The last time he had been on Earth he’d had Jane to guide him through it, but these warriors of Midgard squabbled endlessly and had an understandably poor opinion of Thor’s husband, and it took him much longer to consider these strange people friends than the trio of physicists he had become kin with in the heat of the desert.

Jane… When the two of them met in the Bifrost after Thor’s exile, Loki had spoken of her. That first spark of unfamiliar madness was already shining in Loki’s expression, and he’d bit out threats of ‘visiting’ her on Earth like they were acid rotting his mouth. Thor did not know what exactly it was his own feelings were for the woman, but it was fairly obvious what his beloved partner presumed he felt. He would like for there to be an instant denial of romantic inclination ready, but the truth was in these last long months it had not only been his husband that Thor had dearly missed.

But he had also thought Loki was dead. It was far too early to feel something like love for Jane Foster, but Thor couldn’t deny that presence in his mind had opened the previously unthought of door to moving on and loving another. Of possibly letting go of the love he’d known a thousand years.

Moving on proved to be easier when Loki was dead than when he was traumatized and on a mad rampage of conquest and murder. Thor was… less certain of how to handle that situation, as a spouse.

He did unfortunately, know how to deal with it as Thor Odinson, protector of Midgard and heir to the Asgardian Royal Throne. Loki had killed far too many people, and no sickness of the mind could excuse the destruction that had been wrought by the Chitauri’s invasion. He had to be imprisoned.

If he had broken through to Loki at all during the battle, it had only been for a moment before Loki had stabbed him. And not a playful little jab to the meat of the shoulder, a real stab right into his organ area and Thor had gotten into a fistfight with the Hulk and it hadn’t hurt half as much as Loki’s rejection when he drove that knife into his side.

By the time the battle was over and his husband and the Tesseract were both safely (and separately) secured, Thor had no rage left in him. All of his anger and hurt and betrayal had turned into sadness, and he wanted nothing more than to see the return of a glowing affectionate smile he feared Loki would never wear again. He was still beautiful, even in his pale and exhausted state of defeat, even with his eyes dull of every emotion that wasn’t spite. Any Loki was better than no Loki, and Thor had thought him to be dead long enough to not mind his hatred as long as Loki was alive and safe.

And now that he was back with Thor… even if in his custody, Thor could keep Loki close. Could keep him safe like he had failed to so spectacularly before, and in time, maybe help him heal. 

As long as there was time, there was hope.

—

Loki had to admit - he had not thought that the All Father was hypocritical enough to sentence Loki to eternal imprisonment for conquering an innocent realm, which was a crime Odin himself had built his empire by committing. Apparently, only a  _ failed _ conquest is worthy of punishment. A successful one was rewarded by legends being told.

Thor, his own husband, had not even been at his judgement and sentencing. Off on Midgard, or one of the other realms doing god knows what kind of charity that was more important than the judgement of his own spouse. Cared enough to bring him home in chains but not enough to stick around to see if Loki lived or died.

Disgusting. The entire family was made of disgusting hypocrites. Even her Highness Frigga was in on this scheme, had known the truth of Loki’s birth but hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him of it, even after the endless hours teaching him every magic she knew.

Loki would find his way out of here. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know when, but for now he had plenty of time to stew in his hatred. No prison could hold him.

Except, while the time he had lost in the depth of space with titans Loki’s rage had only grown. Ironically, months in his prison cell in the dungeons of Asgard had done the opposite and drained Loki of any feelings whatsoever. He felt hollow and impotent, and the guard’s gossiping rumors of Thor’s return to Asgard brought Loki neither the slightest trace of delight or despair. What was there left to be angry at him about? 

Thor hadn’t known of Loki’s true origin. He’d been neglectful as a husband, but he’d never lied to Loki - he was barely even capable of deceit. It took the failure of two people combined to make a marriage stale, and Thor had been his own version of loving considering he was so terminally stupid. The great lengths he’d gone to to arrest Loki were less forgivable, but Thor was a good man who was capable of being a great king, and the idea of just letting Loki escape free after stopping him on Midgard had surely never even occurred to his too-honest heart. Loki would resent that more if it weren’t one of the things he’d fallen in love with.

Even Odin Loki had never truly hated. He had not forgiven him and never might, but a grudge was something you could hold without necessarily wanting someone dead. The Allfather had taken Loki into his home and into his family, and for all the time Loki had spent in his childhood looking up to Odin and wishing to make him proud could not be undone, even by the greatest lies. Even through his wrath.

Of course, even his prison of apathy couldn’t stop Loki from taking advantage of an opportunity for trouble. He may not have the energy to try and join the prison break, but he was rather pleased by the idea of one happening at all and one never knew when a favor could be called in.

It was Frigga’s death that changed everything.

Loki’s heart once again beat red with rage, Of course, when Thor came down with an offer it was not his rage that made him accept. Loki had suspected Thor would someday come to Loki for his help in navigating the dark arts but he honestly had been planning on the patience to let him wait years for it, and here Thor was presenting Loki with opportunity to both escape AND help kill Frigga’s murderer at the same time. Who was he to resist?

He suddenly felt alive again, mind whirling with ten thousand ideas and he was absolutely giddy with it. Thor was less than amused but who cared, Loki was out of that wretched cell and it was because Thor  _ needed _ him.

And then Loki met Jane Foster. The worst part about her? The fact that Loki rather liked her, too. Couldn’t even call her a whore when he was feeling spiteful of the look on his husband’s face when he gazed upon her.

He might have just slipped off, might not have gone to the trouble of faking his own death to stop Thor from coming after him again. Might have made a game out of it, and forced Thor to play chase across the realms. But It was Jane that stopped him, with her fierce beauty and fragile human lifespan, and because of the softness with which Thor looked at and spoke to her that Loki had not seen since their courtship.

Jane Foster only had a few short decades to live. Loki could not rob Thor of that time with her, no matter how badly he wanted to.

He did at least, make sure to give his death the dramatic flair it deserved. Heartfelt apology he probably meant and everything. Thor ate it up, all tears and promises to honor his memory - truly a respectable ending, in his opinion.

As for his ultimate decision to toss Odin into a nursing home and pose as him to rule as king in Thor’s absence? That he liked to think of as a prank that got. Out of hand. Honestly, he thought he’d be caught much sooner, at least between the all-seeing Heimdall and the probability Odin would just wake up and walk out the door of the retirement center. He felt he really couldn’t be blamed; if anyone competent had been around to notice him the economy would never have suffered like that.

He was never supposed to have been doing this alone, after all.

—

Thor had had two years to get over Loki’s death, and he had to admit under the circumstances it was hard to decide how to feel about it. There was a bit of relief somewhere, but mostly, it turned out, there was just a lot of anger. Loki had let Thor mourn him while he played theater in a bathrobe, had usurped Odin’s throne and ditched him on Earth and not even because he WANTED to rule as much as he had done it out of spite because Thor’s beloved late husband was a little weasel bitch.

Alright that was a bit harsh, but Thor was under a lot of stress right now. He’d chased rumors through space for two years and found nothing, had strived on his own trusting Asgard’s safety would be in reliable hands while he was alone in the alien wilds only to come back to half the Realms under Odin’s name in war and chaotic shambles while his own people… 

Well actually the Asgardians looked pretty content under Loki’s rule, but his own were not the only people that  _ mattered _ . Hard work and charity were the key to prevent a people from becoming spoiled and lazy, and they had been keeping up on neither. You could not truly call a kingdom prosperous if only one ninth of it wasn’t in turmoil.

And then of course, Odin wasn’t even where Loki said he was. He was in Norway and then he was dead and then Thor had a sister who was just awful, and he had to save Asgard from her but only if he could get BACK to them and he really really  **wished** he had time to be angry with Loki and suspect indecent things of his relationship with the Grandmaster but literally everything was going wrong at once and Loki was… Loki was something else entirely. 

He did look much better than before. Not in the sense that he was more beautiful - which he actually was, because becoming ever more attractive was just one of those things Loki did - but just that he looked healthier. Better-rested, less hateful, generally more sane than Thor had seen him since… Since before his disastrous coronation. Loki wasn’t the same person he had been back then in their naive youth, but neither was Thor. And somehow, even though he did not know what Loki had seen or felt in their time lost from each other, he wasn’t worried that he needed to re-learn Loki. He knew his husband inside and out, after all, had known him most of their entire lives and this wasn’t a new Loki as much as it was… All of the awful things Loki had been pretending he  _ wasn’t _ come out to the surface to run rampant. 

It still wasn’t who Loki really was, not in truth. He still had more layers of lies to hide behind, ones he told himself to protect his own heart as well as the lies he told everyone else, and as much as Thor did still long to take the time to give Loki the reassurances he needed to stop acting like he didn’t care about anyone but himself… Asgard and Hela could not wait. Neither could the larger threat looming somewhere in the depths of the universe drumming out the Infinity Stones to the beats of war.

Being trapped in Sakaar did at least give Thor time to let go of his anger towards Loki. He may not have told Thor he was alive but he’d been hiding in plain sight, right on Asgard’s throne where there was little to no way he WOULDN’T be noticed. He might have escaped to anywhere in the entire universe but instead he came home and waited for Thor, might have led Asgard’s armies into a trail of conquest in his own name but had instead lazed around doing less work than he would have if he’d have just taken his station as Thor’s Queen. 

Loki had done countless twisted, murderous acts in the last few years, and Thor knew it. Yet, he found he could bear Loki no grudge for them. Not because his actions were in any way justified; Loki had acted like a madman and there was no rationale that could excuse what he did, no matter how discontent he may have been with Thor or how desperately lost he’d been in the wake of Odin’s centuries of lies. Which meant the reason Thor found forgiveness in his heart was just because he still loved Loki, and still knew he was and could be better than what his rage and bitterness had driven him to.

He had of course, known he was still in love with Loki the entire time. Had known it when he thought Loki had passed on, had known it when he’d moved on from his death to live with Jane. Loki hadn’t even been what drove them apart - she understood his need for time to grieve, and had taken him into her heart anyway. Thor would, in the end, probably remain a little bit in love with Jane Forster for the rest of time, but… It was not the same kind of love he bore for Loki. His time with Jane had been fun and sweet, but it hadn’t had the all-consuming flame of passion that could make Thor long for his lover’s very presence. 

Jane had helped Thor heal his broken heart, and had shown him the value of every small life in every small world where his mind had been closed off. But as pleasant as it all had been it had also taught him the difference between a romantic fling and a partner to share your life with, and after they’d parted it had once again been Loki who Thor had missed more dearly of the two.

And now he had Loki back, and didn’t have him all at the same time. Loki’s actions since their reunion had made it clear he had no intention of reconciling their marriage, and Thor was just going to have to be content with the knowledge that Loki was alive and thriving as always even if he would not come home.

Banner was alive though, which was fantastic once Thor got over the sting of bruises and public humiliation. A friend was always better to have than pride, and they probably wouldn’t have gotten out of there in the Quinjet that easily anyway considering all of Sakaar’s security. Either way between the Hulk and the Valkyrie he’d gotten his obedience disk off and gotten out of his cage, and after that an actual plan was only a matter of time.

In retrospect Thor probably should have expected that any successful plan would require Loki’s help. That was usually how his life worked, after all, the fates insisting on keeping the two of them locked in this tango that meant no matter what happened between them and whom never wanted to see whom again they would always wind up fighting side-by-side once more.

They were still in perfect sync even after all this time, and it made Thor long to pull Loki into a dance to see if they remembered those steps just as easily. But he knew now wasn’t the time for that, and had already known that the only way Loki might ever return to him is if Thor stopped fighting and finally let him go.

Also, he’d finally gotten to bite the snake before the snake bit him, which was pretty satisfying in itself. He might have felt bad if Thor had believed for a moment Loki would be incapacitated by that disk for long, but he knew better, and it was probably the only way Thor would have gotten safely through the wormhole anyway.

When Thor arrived in Asgard, every friend he’d ever grown up with was already dead. 

He had thought that Odin’s death had brought him pain, but it was nothing like this. His father was a great loss, but what Hela had wrought was the death of every single soldier in the entirety of Thor’s home, every single guard and every last squire. Friends Thor had fought with, friends Thor had mourned with, friends with whom he’d shared meals and baths and horrible scarring wounds and they’d done it all together. Thor had befriended every one of his soldiers and every one of his friends he’d made on the battlefield, and now all of them were gone in a single attack.

Hela was not just a threat to his home and his people. Hela was the monster who had felled his closest friends, who had taken the spirits and lives and futures of his favorite people and reduced them but nothing more than memories Thor didn’t even have time to hold precious.

She had to be stopped. The fact that Thor had no idea how to actually achieve that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that he had no choice, because Hela was the approaching extinction of a hundred thousand realms and  _ someone _ had to do  **something** .

There was something almost invigorating about finally meeting her in the heat of battle, something that made Thor’s very blood sing. He had been helpless and inert for years now in the face of the Infinity stones, and it was nice to have a known enemy he could just throw his body at. Even if that enemy was smarter, more powerful than he, and spiteful enough to take out an eye.

Alright losing the eye wasn’t the dispiriting part as much as getting his ass completely handed to him. Which, then, wasn’t as dispiriting as being held by his throat and shown the helpless plight of his cornered people as they tried to escape. 

When the Ark descended upon the Rainbow Bridge, Thor didn’t need to be able to see Loki to know exactly who was responsible. There was really no one else it could have been anyway - who else in the universe had such perfect dramatic flair?

Loki was there. Loki had come home to him, and he’d done it not because Thor had begged or dragged him in chains, but because he’d wanted to come  _ home _ , and the very first priority when he did return was to help the frightened survivors of Asgard to safety. Thor had loved Loki for a thousand years, but somehow he thinks it might not have been until that moment that he had truly fallen in love. 

It was the distraction from Hela the Ark had afforded that allowed Thor to finally hear his father’s voice. It was a bit embarrassing, being need to be reminded the very basics of himself, but Thor had long ago recognized that being humbled was good for him. In the past he’d been far too proud of his own strength to be able to fully embrace the lightning, trying to harness it as a tool instead of allowing it to run free through his veins.

He also would in the past have been far too arrogant to admit the only way to save Asgard was by destroying her. And yet, even knowing that? Even knowing what he had to do? Didn’t manage to smother the surge of joy that ran through him when he laid eyes on Loki again, radiant and elated in the eye of chaos. Norns, Thor had missed him.

Of course Loki had come back for Asgard and not necessarily for Thor, and there really wasn’t time to celebrate his return or talk about their numerous marital problems. They had sororicide to commit and a planet to destroy, after all.

He had known Loki would agree to go through with his insane plan. But Thor had honestly not expected Loki to actually come back afterwards, assuming he had better pursuits in realms that actually still existed and no desire to join his estranged husband on a tiny spaceship filled with a thousand refugees and no destination. 

It was only natural to assume Loki’s appearance in his room was just an illusion he was casting in order to say goodbye. But then the metal stopper met the solid flesh of hand and the words “I’m here, husband” fell from his softly smiling lips, and Thor…

The bud of hope bloomed into a flower at the same time as the smile on Thor’s face. 

Thor was finally going to get that hug.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to have an epilogue from Loki's pov to even it out, but then it turned into useless fluff and foot porn that didn't match the fic's tone and I cut it,


End file.
